1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a network, a media gateway device and an internal resource management method used in the network, and more particularly to a method of managing internal resources of an MGW (Media Gateway) that is controlled from a plurality of MGCs (Media Gateway Controller).
2. Related Art
The processing capacities of DSPs (Digital Signal Processors) for VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) are being enhanced in recent years and the number of channels that can be processed with a single DSP is increasing. Accompanying this, devices for large size networks that can accommodate a large number of channels have been emerging with respect to MGWs also.
However, in some cases an MGC that controls the MGW does not have enough processing capacity to control all of the channels that are accommodated by the MGW. An MGC controls an MGW using the Megaco. (Media Gateway Control)/H.248 protocol (ITU-TH.248) that is standardized by ITU-T (International Telecommunication Union—Telecommunication Standardization Sector) or IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) (for example, see “Megaco Protocol Version 1.0 11. MG-MGC CONTROL INTERFACE” [RFC (Request For Comments) 3015, November 2000, pp. 71-75]).
However, in the Megaco, since the relationship between an MGC and MGW is that of master/slave, it is fundamentally a one-to-one relationship between the MGC and the MGW and in some cases the capacity of the MGW cannot be fully exerted.
In the conventional MGW control by a MGC as described above, there is a problem that, since it is necessary for the MGC and the MGW to have a one-to-one relationship, a partition loss arises in the resources in the MGW and the resources cannot be effectively utilized.
More specifically, in the conventional MGW control by a MGC, for respective MGCs, the resources inside the MGW are partitioned in a fixed manner for each MGC unit, and a one-to-one relationship is established virtually and fixedly between each MGC and the virtually partitioned MGW to implement call processing, and thus a partition loss arises with respect to the resources in the MGW and the resources cannot be effectively utilized.